Today's Features
CHARTS & GRAPHS

CPA PE Deal Tracker™: The Next Deal Cycle Comes into View

By CPA Trendlines Research

Going into the fourth quarter of 2026, Wall Street’s buying spree for accounting firms is cooling as platform firms digest a two-year surge of acquisitions and the earliest investors, from three to five years ago, begin to cash out, according to the CPA Trendlines CPA PE Deal Tracker™.

MORE Private Equity: Michael Hoover: Growth Without Discipline Comes at a Cost | Big 4 Transparency | CBIZ Told Grant Thornton No, No, No, Before Saying Yes | PE Already Knows Your Price. Do You? | How Private Equity Turns CPA Loyalty into Legal Risk | Ira Rosenbloom: PE Forces Firms to Pick a Future | The Disruptors | Allan Koltin: What Elite CPA Firms Do Differently | Gear Up for Growth

The October 2026 edition of the CPA PE Deal Tracker™ shows accounting’s private-equity deal flow easing in the third quarter, with 37 acquisitions in the U.S. and Canada, down from 42 a year earlier and a far cry from this year’s first-quarter surge of 58. The Tracker now counts 400 such deals in the U.S. and Canada since its records began in December 2016, plus 87 it has found elsewhere, for 487 worldwide, although its coverage outside North America is not systematic.

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AUDIT & ASSURANCE

Managing Walkthroughs Like a Process (Not a Meeting)

How high-performing teams turn a recurring pain point into a source of control and insight

By William Englehaupt

If walkthroughs consistently generate delay and rework, the solution is not incremental improvement in meeting execution. It requires a different approach to how the work itself is structured and managed.

Effective teams begin with a simple but consequential reframing. Walkthroughs are not events; they are a process with a defined start and end point, a sequence of standard activities, and clear ownership for each step. That process typically includes preparation, coordination of PBC requests, structured meeting execution, post-meeting follow-up, and timely completion of documentation and review. When these elements are not explicitly defined, they occur inconsistently, and the gaps between them become the source of delay.

MORE Productivity | MORE Audit and Assurance

One of the most effective ways to stabilize this process is to make the work visible. High-performing teams rely on structured walkthrough trackers that map each step in the process, assign responsibility, and establish expected timing. These are not static checklists but dynamic tools that reflect the flow of work before, during, and after the walkthrough meeting. By making dependencies explicit, they allow both the audit team and the client to understand how delays in one area affect the broader timeline.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Intuit, Thomson, Wolters Kluwer: Accountants Question AI Promises

At the big three user conferences, AI is changing the rules… again.

Vendors take center stage at user conferences. Logos: Thomson Reuters, QuickBooks, Wolters Kluwer

By CPA Trendlines Research

Over the next few weeks, Intuit, Wolters Kluwer and Thomson Reuters will be gathering their users in Las Vegas and Orlando, each bringing software and strategies that accountants fear could encroach on a firm’s client relationships.

Intuit Connect – Oct. 26-28, Aria, Las Vegas. Client books, monthly close, advisory, agents and the accountant relationship. More than 100 breakouts. Up to 12 CPE credits. Learn more
CCH Connections (Wolters Kluwer) – Oct. 25-28, Grande Lakes, Orlando. Tax and audit production, review, migrations and quality management. More than 90 sessions. Up to 19 CPE. Learn more
Thomson Reuters Synergy – Nov. 16-19, Fontainebleau, Las Vegas. Research, preparation, document workflows and engagement evidence. Combined professional audiences; separate general sessions. Learn more

The gap between firms and vendors provides a lens into the season. Intuit Connect, Wolters Kluwer’s CCH Connections and Thomson Reuters Synergy are pairing agentic AI demos with sessions on pricing, review, staffing and leadership. READ MORE →

LEADERSHIP

Kassi Rushing: Your Culture Is What You Reward | MOVE

Leaders must align everyday decisions with the flexibility, innovation, and growth they promise employees.

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Optimize Profits, Delight Clients, & Build a Top-Value Firm!

MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research

In this episode of MOVE Like This, Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk sits down with Kassi Rushing, strategist and speaker with Kassi Rushing Consulting, to explore what future-ready accounting firms need from their people strategies, and why culture, caregiving, leadership development, and business performance are increasingly difficult to separate.

Rushing, who has spent 20 years working in and with the accounting profession, says firms have made significant progress in recognizing people as a critical business asset. But understanding that people matter and creating an environment where they can do their best work are two different things, particularly as firms navigate AI, changing workforce expectations, and significant demographic shifts.

MORE MOVE Like This | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

One example came from a firm that added a simple question to its employee survey: How many employees identify as caregivers? Leadership expected some but was surprised to learn that more than half of its professionals did. Many weren’t simply caring for children; they were simultaneously helping aging parents, stepparents, siblings, or others. The finding prompted the firm to reconsider everything from when it scheduled social events to whether its benefits, training, and leave programs actually reflected employees’ lives.

For Rushing, the lesson is simple: firms can’t support people they haven’t taken the time to understand.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

David Marquis: AI Can Do More Work but Auditors Must Make the Call | The Disruptors

A five-layer “AI trust stack” helps auditors put AI to work while keeping professional judgment at the center.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines

The Break-Through Blueprint for Revolutionizing the CPA Firm Business Model

As AI takes on more audit work, David Marquis sees professional judgment becoming more valuable.

The Caseware CEO argues that the opportunity extends beyond faster document reviews and automated analysis. Firms can rethink how audits work while strengthening the consistency, accountability, and trust that clients and capital markets depend on.

MORE Disruptors with Liz Farr | CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

In The Disruptors, Marquis explains why putting AI to work requires more than a powerful model — and why the profession’s human responsibilities remain central to its future.

“They’re not simply knowledge industries, they’re actually workflow industries,” he says of audit and accounting. READ MORE →

MANAGEMENT

What Internal Controls Mean to Clients

man writing in notebook

And how to explain them.

By Ed Mendlowitz
77 Ways to Wow!

What are internal controls? Auditors widely use this term. It also appears multiple times in engagement letters for audits of businesses and not-for-profits, but I do not believe many outside of the accounting profession really know or understand what internal controls are. I will try to explain it here.

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Internal controls refer to an organization’s system of deterrence, oversight, checks and balances. An illustration is where someone in a business writes and mails the checks to pay a bill. If this same person then receives the bank statement and performs the reconciliation of that account, there would not be any control or oversight on that person and whether the payment was proper and not misdirected. They are checking their own work. This is how many frauds occur.
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